Day 90-93 Mumbai — IndefinitelyOOO

Mumbai is beautiful. It’s buildings are architecturally glorious - not just the big names like the Gateway Of India and the colonial era galleries but normal shops and offices lining its wide, grand streets. It immediately feels cosmopolitan and after 3 months we genuinely feel at home and like we know what we’re doing, strutting into the night for dinner like we’ve always lived there.

Having relied quite heavily on India’s Uber equivalent we decide to walk Mumbai – or rather Colaba and its environs. The Court District is never ending with some of the most stunning buildings I’ve seen here and as well as stopping for a glass of something cold and carbonated in the ridiculously opulent Taj - another Mumbai landmark and the scene of the dreadful bombing over a decade ago – we also get back into our sight-seeing groove.

A boat trip to Elephanta Island to see 1600 year old rock cut temples is beyond impressive as is a visit to one of the best museums we’ve ever been to – the Mumbai City Museum packed full of over 3500 thousand maps, pottery, photographs and textiles.

And it was also the site of my first iced coffee from Starbucks in 6 months and a 4D cinema outing – culture comes in many forms!

As one of the worlds most high-profile cities, much is written about Mumbai (or Bombay as natives still call it, stubbornly resistant to the renaming unlike in the rest of the country) so I won’t try to add too much here, save to mention a few highlights.

We spent our time, as most visitors do, in Colaba and Fort in the south of the city, the oldest part. Grand, Raj-era architecture is everywhere and a feeling of Britishness persists, at least in this part of town, The main station, still known as Victoria Terminus in defiance of its newer title, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, (“Bullshit name” insists an elderly store owner I share a cigarette with) is the size of St. Pancras and designed in the same style. The High Court and attendant lesser courts take up a whole city district and look like cathedrals or the older British universities and barristers in sober saris or black tailcoats with pinstripe trousers hurry between them. Knackered Routemaster buses in familiar red livery plough through the congested streets. I get a much-needed haircut and beard trim in a posh barbers transplanted from St. James’. “The oldest barbers in the world” declares the dapper 80 year old who attends to me, though I’m a little dubious of this.

For all that, it’s a thriving, modern city and we happily mooch around decent cafes, bars and restaurants as we would at home. To break up this lazy indulgence we see the sights, watch the lunchbreak cricketers playing pickup games on the maiden and visit Mumbai’s equivalent of The British Museum, poring over relics of a culture as varied as it is ancient.

There’s much to like about Mumbai but I think I’m happiest in Cafe Military, a Parsi dive bar, unchanged in the better part of a century. The Parsi are Zoroastrian refugees from Iran (the word is a corruption of ‘Persian’) who settled in Bombay in the 11th century, bringing their wealth, habits and inoffensive religion with them, quickly becoming a welcome fixture in society as administrators, businessmen and restauranteurs. They also brought with them a love of beer and a new cuisine that swiftly became Indian staples. “We’re the reason Indians eat eggs” explains the bar’s owner. Again, I’m sceptical but not as suspicious as I am of the menu, which features rather more sheep’s brain than I’m used to. Behind wooden shutters, under rickety vintage fans we while away some time here drinking ice cold London Pilsner while crumbly old Parsis shuffle newspapers and gossip. It’s a good place to collect ourselves before what is nearly the final leg of our journey; north through Maharashtra to Gujarat.